


a river, your feet, my bones

by Anastasia_G



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hospitals, Mention of Death, World War II, Wounds, also angst, also this goes without saying but there's nazis in this, also this is more bonnie-centric than klonnie but, anyway i'm Compromised so excuse me while i disappear into the mountains, but it's not warm and fuzzy, i don't dwell on it too much but, i'm emotional and also embarassed, it's not a sad ending per se, klonnie plays a key role, mentions of guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 14:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18501274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anastasia_G/pseuds/Anastasia_G
Summary: Some months after her grandmother Bonnie's death, Nadya St John receives a cassette: a record of her grandmother's time as a Russian nurse in World War II, told in her own voice.





	a river, your feet, my bones

**Author's Note:**

> This year I set two goals: get serious about my dream of writing a World War II novel, and read more about Russia and the Balkan regions. Svetlana Alexievich's book combined both interests, but also spawned this oneshot that's had possessive hold of me for over a week now and refused to let go until I wrote it. So...think of this as a trial run for the novel but with borrowed characters I feel comfortable with...and an outlet for my ever present klonnie feels lol. Most of this is told in first person POV - which is a gamble, I know. But I found the women's voices in Alexievich's book so compelling that it seemed only natural Bonnie narrates her own story. Hopefully, it's still enjoyable to read. Also...this story poured out of me in the span of a week, and so while it's very dear to me, I'm not sure if everything I wanted conveyed comes across to y'all. Just please be gentle because I am very Exposed TM over this!

 

_“In alien lands I keep the body_  
_Of ancient native rites and things:_  
_I gladly free a little birdie  
_ _At celebration of the spring._

_I'm now free for consolation,_  
_And thankful to almighty Lord:_  
_At least, to one of his creations  
_ _I've given freedom in this world!”_

**Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin,** The Little Bird

 

 

_“‘Should I go back for the German or not?’ I knew that if I left him, he would die soon. From loss of blood...And I crawled back for him. I went on carrying both of them.... My precious one…There can’t be one heart for hatred and another for love. We only have one, and I always thought about how to save my heart.”_

Tamara Stepanovna Umnyagina, (Junior Sergeant in the Guards, Medical Assistant) from “The Unwomanly Face of War: an Oral History of Women in World War II” by **Svetlana Alexievich**

 

* * *

 

 

_In a hotel room, on the outskirts of London, Nadya St John traced a finger over drawings of her grandmother’s face. Across the table, Andreas Mikaelson watched her intently. They had met only hours before._

_Between them sat a cassette player, two glasses, a bottle of vodka, and a slim, yellowing, weather-beaten volume of Pushkin’s poetry._

_“I don’t know what’s in the tape,” Nadya said, her eyes fixed on the sketches. “It could just be.... baking instructions.”_

_“Was she fond of baking, your grandmother?”_

  _“Not particularly,” she sighed. “The truth is... I knew very little about her life before she married my grandfather- except that she was in the war.”_

  _“So was my great uncle.”_

  _She grimaced. “You don’t think they - you don’t think that’s where they met?”_

  _“Do you think your grandmother left you a cassette just to tell you how to make tea cakes?” Andreas asked, wryly._

  _Nadya’s finger stilled._

  _“From what I read in her obituary and what you have told me - she seems by all accounts a remarkable woman,” Andreas continued, then paused. “But I understand, if you wish to listen to her words alone.”_

  _All her life, Nadya had pleaded with her grandmother for more family history, for more pieces of herself. But her grandmother had stubbornly refused, preferring to tell her folktales instead._

  _“I wanted to write a book about her, you know,” she said, with a tinge of bitterness in her grief. “But she balked at the idea. Made me feel like rubbish, actually.”_

  _Andreas said nothing, but reached for the bottle of vodka and refilled her glass._

  _Nadya drained it quickly, then hit Play._

 

 

Nadya, Nadyochka, I know you are angry with me. Perhaps, when you have listened to this story, you will be angrier still. That I never told you. That you are only hearing it now, without me. You might even hate me. But you, my volchitsa, always so hungry for more...I knew I had to give you this last story. Perhaps someday you will understand why I could only tell you now...now, after I am gone.

 

 

The war began in summertime.

I had just turned sixteen, and everyone was enlisting. Train loads of soldiers - I remember seeing them off with ribbons and flowers. I only had my mother, and her health was very fragile. She couldn’t have lived through an evacuation or anything like that. So we went to live with my father’s family in Kislovodsk. We thought then the war would be over soon. In weeks or months! But years went by, the country was starving and burning. As soon as I turned eighteen my friends and I took the medical training courses. We all wanted to do our part, and I most of all. I wanted them to see, I and my family loved the Motherland as much as they did. Though our skin was dark, Russian blood flowed in our veins. This I had been told since I was a child.

I had already studied nursing - I came from a family of nurses and doctors. I finished the certification in just two months, and then I was off - off to the front.

 

 

How can I describe what it was like? I don’t like to think about it - even now it makes me tremble. All those maimed bodies. We worked day and night and didn’t sleep. The medics would crawl to the wounded as they lay on the battlefield, give them some aid, then carry them to safety - to us nurses. I worked quickly, my bandaging and stitching were so good, the doctors were always impressed. They even had a name for me. The little weaver. I dreamed of the medals I’d receive. I think I was too proud, and I had to be humbled somehow. I don’t know. But during one battle, they took us all by surprise. In the middle of the night - oh, it was chaos. Terrible, terrible chaos. I was running to a fallen soldier when they took me. Well, he took me. Lieutenant Commander Niklaus Mikaelson. I remember his face so clearly -keen and angular, almost cruel. But he did not kill me.

He knew what I could do. 

 

 

They had lost two nurses and the medics were overworked. 

“I would rather die,” I told him. “Than aid a single fascist.”

His smile was crooked and terrible, like my convictions were a child’s diversion. I _was_ ready to die. I’d seen what they did to our women. Heard stories of mutilated bodies, breasts chopped off, burned and impaled. I was - ready for all this. But he took me by the arm, in a steel grip, and threw me inside the shed where they’d lain their wounded. “So it’s death you want. Well, have at it. Take your fill.” He hissed close to my face, like some terrible, sharp creature. The kinds we tell young children about, to scare them. Don’t go in the forest, or the hungry shadows will eat you.

He left me there, locked up with the wounded. Some of them were already dead, others close to dying. I sat in a corner and drew up my knees. I wanted to shut them out. But the shed was so small, and the smell of blood and waste - the thick, unbearable smell of death. He left me there all night, and the cries and moans of dying men - they had no language anymore, only the animal wails of pain... they could have been Russian or English or German, or dogs and horses, there was no difference. Some of them reached out their hands to me. Mumbled words. They were all delirious, I think they thought I was a German, or their wife, or mother. I don’t know. All night they moaned and cursed and howled, and their hands tried to reach me. I couldn’t bear it. I would do anything to make them stop. A thought came to me that I could kill them all, if I wanted. Smother them with their bloodstained rags. It would be a mercy for many of them. I would be killed when they discovered me or worse. I would die a hero. But I- I’m not heroic, that is what I learned.

 When I couldn’t bear it anymore I stood, and began to bandage them, one by one. I...don’t know how long I worked, but I went to each one. Maybe forty of them. Some of them didn’t live through the night, they died with my shadow over them. A black girl from Minsk, can you imagine? That was their last sight. How strange God is.

I was so absorbed in my work I didn’t feel the hours wheel by. I was drunk from exhaustion, and covered in blood. I don’t remember closing my eyes, but I woke up with the Lieutenant’s boots next to my face. I had collapsed and fallen asleep right there, on the dirty floor between the wounded men. But still, I was insolent. I had carried out my work, but I would not respect the fascists. I stood and faced him. The Lieutenant was a tall man, tall as a tree, and fearsome when he wanted to be, though he was young - much younger than you would think. “Well,” I said. “Shoot me and get it over with.”

 “My dear fräulein, war is no time for waste.”

And I saw his meaning. He meant to keep me. I was a good nurse, a Bennett woman. My mother and grandmother had sure fingers. They were stitching wounds long before male doctors learned the art. I thought about killing myself. I did. But even death seemed too much of an effort. I was tired as a dog. I would have lain down in pig slop if it meant I could close my eyes for a few more minutes.

I cursed him. The foulest curse I knew. My grandmother probably blushed in her grave, God rest her soul. But I threw that curse at his feet and went right back to bandaging. Sewing. Sopping up his soldiers’ entrails. And he watched me for a long time. So long, and so still, I half forgot he was there. Like a shadow. Yes, just like a shadow.

 

 

There was a fairy story my grandmother told me, about a king who imprisoned a village girl and commanded her to spin straw into gold. Well I spun my magic that night and many other nights, only in place of straw I wove torn and ruined flesh, I stitched up skin and pushed bones back where they belonged. My hands shone with gore and excrement, not gold. In those days, you couldn’t even remember what gold looked like. Not the color, nor the shine. You couldn’t remember color at all, except red. Always red.

 

 

We came to this village, some border place. The Germans had already passed through, and the ground was covered in the dead. So many dead, from both sides, lying beside and on top of and across each other, like some strange embrace. But what I remember the most is their eyes - so many eyes. Open, dead eyes. I couldn’t bear it. I broke from the ranks and hurried forward. I thought, Let him shoot me if he likes. But I’ll close at least one pair of eyes before the life leaves my body. I flitted from corpse to corpse, sealing their grey eyelids closed. Like a girl picking flowers. That’s what it felt like. My feet were light, my fingers almost playful. I didn’t dare linger long you see, or my spirit would have failed, and I would have -  Anyway, what use are tears? So I went on closing every pair of eyes I could, until there were none left. I waited for the bullet to pierce me, or some other reprimand, but when I turned to the Lieutenant his face was kind of stunned, like he was frozen. He didn’t say a word to me, nobody did. He just waited for me to finish my task and rejoin the ranks. Oh, so many eyes. It was beyond enduring. Years later, my son - your father, was showing me a picture book of animals - with shining, colorful drawings. When we got to the peacock, I couldn’t move, I felt sick. My mouth got salty and I started trembling. All those eyes, open, unblinking. I wanted to scream. I’ve never looked at a peacock since.

 

 

I was with them for months. But I still never strayed far from the wounded. The men got used to me for the most part. All except the Lieutenant. He would approach me freely while I worked, scrutinizing my stitches and watching me move from soldier to soldier. I slept where the wounded slept, in the corner...that is, when I had time to sleep. That regiment...they were part of the Wehrmacht but they were also loyal to each other, to their commander, in ways I didn’t understand. They would have followed him anywhere, even with me as a nurse. I pitied them...they were ready to worship the ground he walked on. That kind of zeal - even now it makes me shudder to think of it.

But he would sit with the wounded when he could. Sit and talk and smoke with the ones who were awake. They were glad of his company. Any medic, German or Russian, will tell you how much the soul is a part of healing. Laughter heals. A human voice, human touch - it all heals. Often I felt we worked together - me, stitching wounds and bandaging flesh. Him, talking to them in their mother tongue.

 

 

The day came when I was wounded. A piece of shrapnel - on my left side. I could still walk, still move. I was too proud to say anything. I just kept going, rolling bandages. I felt the blood trickling down my side, into my boots. Eventually I must have fainted. When a battle’s going on, no one notices such things. I woke up thinking I was dead - it was quiet and dark and there were blankets over me. But I was only lying in the commander’s tent, on his cot. My wound had been bandaged.

I saw him sitting there, still in his uniform, his pistol, everything, watching me. There was dust in his hair.

“I was hoping I was dead,” I told him. “That we were both dead.”

I thought he would shoot me then and there. But he smiled - like he understood something both terrible and beautiful. “God is not yet finished with us, little witch.”

He had devised that name for me, on account of how much time I spent cursing and sewing, he said.

And then... he fed me soup. I was too stunned to protest. A fascist was feeding me soup with his own hand, soup to make me better. I thought I was going mad. I fell asleep right after, blood loss and exhaustion overcame my pride.

 

 

I recovered in that cot for three days. The first night, I woke in a delirium and saw that my kit had been brought to me...the same kit I was wearing when I was taken. It had my supplies, but also everything of value I had brought with me to the front. A picture of my grandmother. A lock of hair from my brother Jaimie who died when I was ten. My mother’s handkerchief. And Pushkin. An old copy of his poems that had been passed down from my great-great grandmother. There was a story in our family that we were related to Pushkin, and by him to Abram Petrovich Gannibal, the great Moor of Moscow. I don’t know how true that was...every black Russian at the time claimed some relation to Gannibal. But the book was precious to me, because I had had it since childhood, and it smelled like home. I scrambled inside my kit but the book was gone. I was half frenzied...if I lost that book...

But it was in the Lieutenant’s hands. He was seated on the floor in his boots, thumbing the pages. Reading Pushkin’s words... I can’t describe the rage that filled me...more than when he abducted me, more than when he locked me in that room. I flew at him with an animal cry, claws out.

Of course I didn’t get very far. I was still weak from the blood loss...but I ripped a button off his regimental overcoat before he pinned down my hands. A stream of Russian curses flew from my mouth. I think even he was startled. Eventually I lost strength and he hauled me back on the cot. I fell asleep immediately. I slept until evening the next day. With Pushkin by my head! I had managed to snatch it from him after all, or maybe he put it there. I don’t remember...

One night I awoke and saw the strangest sight. Sheets of paper hung up in a corner of the tent...drawings. Rivers, trees, cathedrals...faces and hands. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can see them. They haunt me. I drifted off to sleep again and when I gained consciousness, the drawings were gone. I thought maybe I had dreamt them, but now I know...now I know they were his. I wonder what happened to them.

By the third day, I wanted to return to duty. Not because I was well enough, but because I wanted to sleep on my dirty floor again. I cursed myself for weakness, for accepting his care, for lying in his bed. I dressed myself and hobbled to the wounded. Everyone stared, they were shocked to see me walking. The Lieutenant saw me, he had been talking to some of the men...he fell silent when I walked by. I had stolen the words right from his mouth! I thrilled to it. It kept me on my feet, my pride at the look on his face.

 

 

Once, I was sewing up a wound, and the Lieutenant who was nearby asked me, “Have you ever seen Vienna, fräulein?”

I didn’t answer. What kind of question was that to ask your prisoner, your enemy! I thought he was mocking me, so I said nothing.

“Your beloved poet spent a summer there. They say he loved the city very much.”

And I thought he was taunting me for sure. Vienna was in German hands, as they soon hoped to claim Moscow and St Petersburg.

“More’s the pity then,” I said, “that it belongs to fascists now.”

“For now, yes.”

“When they kill you, I can take your bones there,” I said. “I would go to Vienna with joy.”

It was so silent, all the wounded soldiers were asleep or unconscious. Our eyes met across the room and the air felt heavy. He looked at me so strangely, then he laughed.

“And what would you do with my bones?”

“Throw them in the river,” I answered, like we were discussing weather. “And dance on the rest until they were dust.”

He shrugged, smiling with a cigarette between his fingers.  “A river and your angry heels - not such a terrible end.”

 

  

The regiment were in retreat, and I with them. Half of them was dead, the rest dispirited and maimed. The Lieutenant barely spoke, barely slept. He was like a man possessed, driving us all mile after mile. I think he thought if he could get them to Germany, then at least they could meet their fate on native soil. To die at home is always better than dying in the enemy’s country. At least, that’s what people told themselves. Wartime changes your perspective. Certain things feel blurred and unimportant. Others, clear as day.

Eventually we reached a small village. Farmland. Most of it had been burned or looted but there were two houses standing, and blackberries. I remember blackberries. We marveled at them like they were jewels. Stopped to tear them out and shove them in our mouths. Until our lips, our teeth, our fingers stained black.

I knew my time with them was drawing to a close. Some of the soldiers gave me looks. They would have to shoot me soon. That’s what they did to their captured.

But that night, everyone was quiet. Quiet and content after blackberries.

 

  

There was soap! A real cake of white soap...it smelled like stale flowers. Oh, you can’t imagine what a wondrous sight that was after months and months of cleaning yourself with ash, if you got to clean yourself at all. I took a bucket of water and I scrubbed and scrubbed, scrubbed until I was raw. I remember there was a small can of cooking oil in the kitchen and I slathered it all over my body, my hair - I must have smelled like a roast, but I didn’t care. I was so happy... I could fly. I found an old dress, practically rags. It hung off me and smelled like mold, but it was a dress! In some moldy old cotton and I felt like a Tsarina, imagine! That is what war does...

I remember the Lieutenant was sitting in a chair by the window, smoking. He saw me but didn’t say anything. I think there was triumph in his eyes, and amusement. That instead of running away or killing myself...I had taken a bath, used soap, put on a dress. I couldn’t even be angry with him, I felt too luxurious. When he put the cigarette down I took it, took it straight from under him...brought it to my lips, inhaled deeply. I’d never liked the smell of tobacco before the war...but God, the way that smoke filled my lungs. Such simple, pure delight. It made me spin. I was giddy. I put my arms out and spun like a madwoman, or a girl dancing... I spun and spun and when I stopped, my face was wet. I was crying, simply crying, but laughing too.

The Lieutenant rose from his chair and held me by the waist. Moved me around the floor. Crying doesn’t feel so bad when you’re moving. It feels natural. You breathe, you cry, you move. We danced without music.

He was a good dancer...

 

 

I don’t remember how it started. Who kissed who first. Maybe he seized my face tight between his fingers. Maybe I grasped his hair, pulled his mouth down to mine. I don’t know. But I remember the kissing. My back on the hearthstones. Tongues and teeth. I think we drew blood. We tasted each other’s blood, like blackberries. If anyone saw us - I don’t know what we looked like. Feral cats maybe. Clawing and biting. But I remember - he was so careful with my dress. That tattered thing...he handled it so slowly. Like he knew...he knew how glad I was to wear a dress again and how it came off - that mattered. It mattered to us both.

 I know, I know. I should have killed myself before I let him touch me. But you don’t understand what it’s like, how wartime starves you. To be touched that way - touched and stroked... Do you understand?

 He wasn’t German in that instant.

 Well...that’s not true. He was who he was and I...I wanted to be touched. Like the soap and the oil and that ragged dress. Wartime starves you.

 

 

He was a good dancer.

 

 

We were there for two days. Looking back...it’s strange. We had been marching non stop to reach the German border. Why did he have us stop?

There was no bed, so we slept on the floor. Him and me, side by side. You know, I haven’t blushed once this entire time. But now, now when I think how we lay in each other’s arms, in the middle of the war - How do I tell you? I used his chest for a pillow and he didn’t move. All night he lay just as he was, so I could sleep.

 

 

He dragged me, dragged me by the arm and threw my clothes at me. His voice was cold and sharp, and his gun was drawn...pointed at my head. “Get dressed.”  I was too shocked to think - so I did as he asked. He dragged me outside, my boots stumbling on the rocks. I clawed at his hand, even though his pistol was pressed at my ribs. I don’t know what I thought I could do. But if he was going to shoot me in the back like a dog, well - I was going to bite him at least once.

He brought me to his horse. Milo. He loved that horse. I’d watched him feed it sugar cubes from his own hand. Once Milo took a small wound during battle and the Lieutenant himself bandaged it. I saw that Milo was saddled as if for a long journey, and still the Lieutenant’s purpose was unclear to me. Until he pushed me at the horse and cocked his pistol.

“Go,” he said, and his voice wasn’t cold anymore but bleak and quiet. He aimed his pistol at my heart. “Go now, take the path through the forest, Milo will show you.”

It hit me like a bullet and I started shaking. I couldn’t move. I just stood there, staring like a mute.

At last I found words. “- what will happen to you?”

He smiled. A smile that looks the world in the face. “Go, little witch, before I change my mind.”

And still I did not move. I don’t know what it was - shock, or a youthful obstinance. But I looked him in the face and didn’t move. He cursed me, then strode forward and crushed me to him and kissed me, hard, over and over. And he cursed while he kissed me, and my tears fell on his lips. I think there were other words...soft words mingled with the cursing. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just how I remember it. He held me for what seemed a long time. I didn’t want him to stop holding me. I almost didn’t want to return home. They say the war made us courageous, but I was a coward in that moment. Weak. Soap and oil and being touched...I pressed the Pushkin to his chest. I gave it to him.

He took my face between his hands. Kissed my temples, my nose, my cheeks, my lips. I remember his breath was ragged...But he collected himself with great effort.

“Now _go_. Or I shall shoot you and the horse.”

 

 

  
Milo was very sure footed. Once or twice I fell asleep on the saddle and he still kept to the path. It took me almost three days to reach the Soviet lines...I had bruises all down my backside and legs. For weeks I could barely sit down. Oh, what a joy it was to hear Russian voices, to see their faces. I was ready to go back to work...bandaging, stitching. But they gave me strange looks. How did she escape the fascists when our mothers and sisters and brothers hadn’t? There was resentment you see...anger. Doubts about my loyalty. The commanding officer put me with the other prisoners, captured German soldiers. We were being transferred to Moscow for interrogation. I realized I would most likely die or be crippled. I had heard stories about the NKVD, the methods they used for extracting truth from their own citizens. Ah, Nadyochka, it was such a time.

I prayed for a quick death, but it was a shallow prayer. I was not ready to die yet. I thought of how I would never see my mother again, never taste blackberries or laugh with my friends... I wanted to see the other side of war. I wanted to live.

We prisoners lay in filth, and there was no food even for the soldiers except rations and crumbs. I slept in fits and starts. Sometimes I woke in a delirium, and thought he was there, feeding me soup. Other times I swear I saw pieces of pencil sketches hanging in front of me. Rivers and trees and churches but also my face. Well...if I ever called his name, only the imprisoned heard me.

 

 

 

Milo...that dear horse. He was killed when a German shell hit the cart he was tied to. I didn’t know until later...When they told me, I felt this pain in my chest. Like a bayonet had pierced me. I mourned, but I couldn’t cry. It’s always worse when the tears don’t come.

I wish I had thought to keep a clip of Milo’s hair. Such a brave, good horse.

 

 

I was rescued by an old friend of my father’s. He served as an official at a military checkpoint and when he saw me, he recognized me at once. He fed me a meal and put me on a train to my mother. He told me to get out of Russia as soon as I could- before the NKVD found me again.

I found my mother and our relatives alive, if nearly starving. But it seemed everyone was starving then. I worked as a laundress with her and some other women. Backbreaking work...the water skinned our hands and covered them in blisters. But I did it. Like a penance. I was only grateful to be alive.

Two months after my return, I fainted during a shift. Nothing new - everyone was fatigued, barely fed. But at home, when my mother examined me - we realized I was pregnant. I could hardly believe it - after everything. She said nothing, she knew I had been in German custody for months. It was still early enough to end the pregnancy if I wanted.. But I wanted to have the baby. I was so stubborn, even then, despite everything...My mother was furious with me. I don’t blame her, she was only concerned for my safety, and hers too.

So I packed my things and left. My mother wept such tears, we both did. I promised her I would find her again. But I never did. She fell ill and died before Victory. I often wondered if she died of grief. So many women died that way. I heard stories.

 

 

I found my way to a military hospital in a neighboring town. I could think of nowhere else to go, anything else to do...I was back to stitching and bandaging. I told myself, if they come for me, they’ll find me here, doing what I was meant to do. I was still on my feet for most of the day ha! But there were some small comforts. Potatoes. Bread. The patients and other nurses - they were happy to see a pregnant woman. They all smiled when they saw me walk by. Asked me how the baby was. Some of them took bets - whether it would be a girl or a boy. I shuddered to think what would happen if they knew the truth...

That’s where I met your grandfather Lorenzo. He was a pilot, English. They had stopped for a brief time while waiting for orders. All the girls thought he was handsome and tried to catch his eye. But he sought me out - I don’t know why. I was already showing, but he didn’t care about that. He was an orphan, he’d lived a hard life before he joined the army. He had kind, warm eyes...

He soon received new orders, and he asked me to marry him. I told him, go win the war and come back, then we’ll see. I didn’t dream he would. But he came back, two years later. Your father had just learned to walk. He was such a handful...Lorenzo just picked him up, like he was his own. And he didn’t need to ask me again. We were married soon after, and I left with him for England.

 

 

 

I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I tell Lorenzo the truth? Well, what good would it have done us? The war was enough - when you survive something like that, life seems simple, clean cut. I wanted to raise my son, he needed a father, I wanted a husband -and we were happy. Happy to be alive. Oh things were difficult for us in London. I won’t lie. My English was good, but you know how these people are. Tongue tied or worse by the sight of a foreigner, and a black one at that, who spoke Russian! Some days I wanted to shout - you’re as bad as the fascists. But other days...other days I had my son, I had my husband. We had strawberries, real butter...and, a bathtub! Soap and oil. The three of us, we were alive.

 

 

Oh, I thought about him. Of course I did. But I never tried to find out what happened to him. If he was dead, if he was alive - knowing either way would have...

It was better not to know. There were times - as your father grew, sometimes, I thought I saw glimpses. A look in the eye. The corner of a smile. But then you were born, my Nadyochka. From the very first moment I held you, saw your eyes sparkle...Even more than your father...you, you reminded me.

 

 

No, I never forgot him. You never forget...but, you must live. Make the most of life. And I was happy.

 

 

Nadyochka you always asked me for stories of Russia, for stories of the war...but I could never tell you. Everything has a price. When I left the Motherland and came to this country...so many others had perished, so many others deserved this crossing more than I. Remember the fairy stories we read together? There’s always a price, and sometimes that is your silence, for years and years and years. If the exchange is fair, only you yourself can say. For me, I had your father, and you, and when we were all together...your first birthday when I sewed you that blue dress...and the walks you took me on, seeing you grow up...Nadyochka, little wolf...it was enough. For me, more than enough.

Put that in your book, if you do nothing else.

 

 

_In a hotel room, on the outskirts of London, Nadya St John studied the sketches again, the face of her grandmother as a young girl. The lines swift and wistful... dreamlike - as if the artist was trying to capture something before it dissolved._

_There’s a slight tremor in her hands that had nothing to do with illness and everything with the blanketing knowledge, this hidden piece of her grandmother’s life that was mailed to her three months ago by the executor of her will, shortly after her funeral. An obituary in the newspaper had brought Andreas and her to this hotel room. He spent his time between England and Austria, and had recognized Bonnie from his great uncle’s sketches._

_Andreas spoke slowly, like a man re-learning the meaning of words. “My grandfather, Henrik Mikaelson...he was only thirteen when the war ended. His family was tried and executed, all except one....,”_

_“Niklaus Mikaelson,” Nadya said, and it seemed that name stirred the invisible dust around them. A ghost’s breath._

_“He disappeared during the war, without a trace. His belongings were found in a trench and sent home to Germany. This book and some drawings...the ones she saw in the tent, and ones she never saw, of her.”_

 

 

I gave him the Pushkin. I don’t know if he kept it, if it was lost...maybe he threw it in a ditch. But I could no longer worry about that. It was the giving. I had to, and I don’t think I can explain...

Everything has a price.

 

 

_Eventually, they left the room and walked through London. It was August, and summer already waning. They ate sandwiches together and watched the sunset over the Thames. They sat in silence, looking for words._

_And it seemed to Nadya that the world had altered color, stained with her grandmother’s voice. Everything was naked, and pulsing, and bleak, yet also more beautiful. Beyond beauty, nameless, and tender._

_Beside her, Andreas opened the book of poems, carefully, more carefully than a man handling a relic, and in the changing light, began to read._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> *I don't know if Pushkin ever spent time in Vienna, that detail is pure artistic license on my part. He was, however, definitively Afro-descended by way of his great grandfather Gannibal. 
> 
> **The NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), or The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, was a ministerial arm of the Soviet Union that, in addition to overseeing police operations, carried out massive extrajudicial imprisonments, torture, and executions both during and after World War II
> 
> ***The Wehrmacht refers to the armed forces of Nazi Germany


End file.
